Blackness Castle.

Back to reality today with a club run to Blackness. The ride started off badly with two errant riders going off course a hundred yards after the start, having done what I believe shepherds call "outrun, lift and fetch" to retrieve the miscreants, the three of us then made a second little detour and so had to wait for the main group to catch up. There-after it was back to Plan A.

The sartorially challenged gentleman, who has featured before in this journal, had his usual two punctures and used them to start an argument about whether one should begin removing a tyre at the valve, or opposite it; he stated that his point of view was supported by "The Ladybird Book of Bicycle Maintenance;" this was promptly countered by the claim that, 'any publisher that produces an edition of "Winnie The Pooh" especially simplified to make it suitable for children needs reprogramming with a large axe.'

Returning to the main plot, we had a new leader today who found novel and interesting routes both out and home, and which included numerous off road sections resulting in a satisfactorily tiring day.
Unfortunately, the coffee shop earned black marks for both switching off the coffee machine and closing the sausage counter before we arrived. The TD household had to slum it with supermarket substitutes.

The blip of the castle was taken from the grounds of Hopetoun Estate and is a view I had not seen before.